Phoebe Kate

At least it’s the conundrum posed by a recent study.  Yesterday, CNN and Dr. Singh Gupta made it a news story. 

Seems that 3,682 men and women in their 40s and 50s participated in a marital mortality study over a 10-year period.  Researchers found that women who remain quiet (”self-silence”) during marital arguments were 4 times more likely to die than women who spoke out freely.

They also determined that men with wives who vented about problems at work were 2.7 times more likely to die early.

Hmmm….  What’s the bottom line here for us, ladies? 

Kvetch at hubby all we want about his ED, slobby ways, laziness, stupidity and many, many failures and mistakes, and we’ll both will live longer (though not necessarily happier) lives – but we’d better self-silence about our job woes or we’ll kill our man off?  Or, conversely, if we can’t stand the old fart but don’t want to go through a messy divorce or become a Desperate Housewife, just bitch and gripe about work all the time?  Within 10 years, he’ll keel over and we’ll get the insurance, the house, the cars, the bank and 401k accounts — and our freedom.  Whoo-hoo!     

Dr. Elaine D. Eaker, the study’s lead author, published the findings with the caveat that more research is needed to confirm the results “before we make a lot out of them.”

Which begs the question: what makes this worthy of CNN’s and our attention? 

It’s just one more meaningless study from a company funded by the federal government (courtesy of our hard-earned tax dollars) that’s being hyped by cable news program hosts and TV medcelebs who have too much airtime on their hands and not enough real news to report. 

Bottom line?  It’s total fluh and it’s much ado about nothing. 

“It’s okay to mess up.  You should give yourself a break.”

Now there’s a man who can speak authoritatively on the subject of messing up. 

As a senior in high school, Billy overslept, missed a final exam and didn’t graduate.

He went through not one, but two, managers who mismanaged funds and gave him disastrous advice. 

He signed with a record company that wrote a lifetime clause into the contract.  Nearly 20 years of legal disputes later, he finally escaped a binding document whose fine print he had obviously failed to read — but not before he’d lost millions in royalties for his top-selling albums. 

He lost another million dollars as a result of deciding to do a goodwill tour of Russia to promote one of his albums.  

He’s been divorced twice, had several car wrecks and been in rehab for substance abuse twice.

He’s 58 now and, judging from his performance at this year’s Super Bowl, he’s lost his voice along with a ton of money, two wives (#3 is more than 30 years his junior so the total will probably change shortly) and the good sense to behave in a way that keeps him out of the tabloids and out of trouble.  Another year older, and apparently not one whit wiser.

And I thought I was a fuck-up.  Thanks, Piano Man.  

–phoebe kate

Saddened to hear of the death of American artist Elizabeth Murray on Sunday from cancer complications.  Her works were some of the most striking examples of modernist abstraction.  She painted when painting had ceased to be of interest in the art world.  She adopted a bold, colorful, oft-called “cartoonesque” style when Minimalism ruled.  She was not universally acclaimed by critics or art lovers, but against all the odds, she became famous, with exhibits at MoMA in NY, the Smithsonian and the National Gallery.  And she deserves to be there. 

The subject of her art was change and struggle, fragmentation and disconnection.  Her paintings were often about one thing — a dog, a cup, a plate, a bowl, a table, a keyhole, shoelaces.  Domestic things, commonplace things — but with a dark, disturbing and complex quality that only becomes apparent upon close study.  Her view of life, the world and relationships was not necessarily a happy one, but one that resonates in many people’s spirits.

Some of her works can be seen here.

-phoebe kate

Been busy the last few days sending two kids to college.  One is a sophomore.  The other is a senior. 

Somehow, I was under the impression this process would get easier when they weren’t nervous freshmen heading off to a life-changing, watershed kind of event. 

Ha.

And again I say, HA.

One kid came back from a stint this summer as an intern for a Congressman in DC.  He had four days to get his act together.  The other kid worked on her summer break at our hometown Sears and then took 2 weeks vacation in Florida.  She returned with 36 hours to get her ass in gear.

New clothes buying.  Old clothes sorting.  Laundry.  More laundry.  Finding extra-long sheets for dorm beds (why don’t colleges put the basketball team — don’t get me wrong, I love collegiate basketball with a passion – in a dorm of their own so normal-height people can buy regular sheets at reasonable prices??!!)Purchasing school supplies.  Getting haircuts.  Doctor appointments.  Teeth cleaning.   

Anxiety over financial aid.  Anxiety over another year in which they’ll have to prove themselves so they can get into a good grad school and have FAFSA finance the rest of their education.

Oh, and there’s more beyond the practical realm  Now we’re into the more dicey existential issues.  Anxiety over boyfriends/girlfriends, current or future — will I ever find the ‘right’ person for me?  Does such an entity even exist?  

Anxiety about being on a campus at all – will I be in the wrong place at the wrong time with someone who’s going to take people out with a machine gun or an SUV or (God help us) something worse?  The massacre at Virginia Tech and the horrible incident at Chapel Hill are not quickly forgotten.  My son still wears a memorial ribbon with the VA Tech colors on his scarf.  And campus crime, on an interpersonal level, is at an all-time high, even at the best of the schools.  Your roommate could be a psychopath, since college admissions offices don’t seem to bother much with background searches on applicants.

And probably the biggest angst issue of all — anxiety about growing up.

This all somehow becomes the domain of Mom.  It’s our kids’ set of problems, but we share in it.  When we have babies, we buy into it, whether we realize it or not.     

I don’t foresee it getting better, to be honest.  Even when I send my kids off for their Ph.D, it will be the same.

For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, ’til death do us part, motherhood is forever.

And that’s more than you can say for one out of three marriages.

-phoebe kate

You’ve seen it as many times as I have.  The paper towel ad. 

A beset mother is working at the sink.  A son of about 8 or 10 takes a semi-frozen bottle of orange soda out of the fridge.  He shakes it violently and (of course) it baptizes him, his mother and the entire kitchen in sugary, syrupy liquid.  

Instead of removing the offending object from his hand and explaining why this isn’t a good thing to do (like any sane person would do), the mother turns the spray nozzle from her sink on the idiot kid and says, “What’s the matter with you?  This works much better.”

They spray each other with their chosen weapons.   Then the Way-Cool Mom wipes up the room-wide oopsie with a handy-dandy towel.

Hell, there aren’t enough paper towels in the world to deal with a problem of this magnitude. Who writes this stuff? 

Obviously, people who have never had to clean up counters, floors, appliances, lighting fixtures, and the hair, skin and clothes of themselves and others when an accident like this one occurred.

What’s the message here?  Someone will always be there to mop up our messes and make our stupid mistakes fun for us?

Television commercials are insidious.  They run nonstop in between our favorite shows, telling us how to think, to feel, to parent, to react, to deal with life, to handle our relationships.  On a subliminal level, they create norms for us.  They are not only peddling products that won’t really fix the problem, but also advocating attitudes that won’t do a damn bit of good for anyone.

I could name several dozen ads that do this, but I figure that you’re smart enough to figure that one out yourself.  

Ads are the background music of our lives and whether we know it or not, we dance to their tune. 

-phoebe kate